=============================================Interviewer's note - Columns of Albanian refugees marched across
the world's TV screens for months. They were all going to
Albania. All the world could see them. What the world
couldn't or wouldn't see, and won't see, were the
Albanians going to Serbia.

Agim K. (27), an engineer born
in Pristina, is
an Albanian by nationality. He and his family, flying
from the terror of their compatriots, found refuge in
Belgrade. I met him in the offices of the Red
Cross of Serbia, where he was applying for help, and asked him to
tell me his story. He agreed, under the condition that his
last name and present address not be published for
security reasons.

Q: Why and when did you and your family leave
Kosovo?

A: We left Pristina on Friday,
the 8th of October.
We left because we were forced to. It was no longer a
matter of wanting or not wanting - it was a question of
survival.

Q: Who forced you?

A: No matter how unbelievable it sounds, the
Albanians did. You see, my father was always a loyal
citizen of this country. He was born here, and respected
the laws and authorities of Serbia, not of Albania; and
certainly not of a terrorist organization such as the UÇK. [Note from
Emperor's Clothes: 'UÇK' stands for Ushtria Çlirimtare e
Kosovës. In English: Kosovo Liberation Army or KLA. - Jared Israel]

When the bombing started,
the UÇK was mobilizing Albanian
people, young and old, to fight against the Yugoslav Army.
UÇK soldiers made constant threats: they wanted
men to go to war, and their families to go to Albania or
Macedonia as refugees. They went from door to door. A lot of the men
joined of their own free will, but there were even more who joined out
of fear. People were scared of retaliation against their families more
than they were scared for their own lives.

Q: Did the UÇK come to your door, too?

A: Yes, of course they did. More than once.
My father and me, we refused to join them. The soldiers
said they would shoot us as traitors, burn our house. My
father answered that they could kill us all, if that's what
they wanted, but he and his family wouldn't be butchers
and scavengers. Finally they left us alone, saying that they wouldn't
have to kill us, that the Yugoslav Army would finish the job for them.

Q: What did you do during the bombing? Did you
stay in Pristina?

A: We stayed and
spent almost three months in the cellar of our Serbian friends; they had
the biggest and safest cellar in the neighborhood, so all of us
neighbors hid there with them - about 15 to 20 people. No one paid any
attention to nationality; we were all humans, helping each other
survive.

Q: And after the bombing?

A: That's when the real trouble started. After
the war ended, and KFOR entered Pristina, the UÇK came back.
But they were not alone - the borders were no longer
guarded, you see; anyone could come in. All the worst
scum from Albania invaded Kosovo. The UÇK was fully armed
and no one cared to stop them; they could do whatever
they wanted. And they did - this time real ethnic
cleansing was at work. Serbs were killed on a daily basis
in the city; abductions, rapes, burnings, threats; a
circle of violence with no ending. What can I say? You
could all see that. All the world could see, if only they
wanted to. Me and my family tried to help our Serbian
friends, the way they helped us during the war. But we
couldn't even help ourselves. To the UÇK WE were worse then
them - we were traitors! And since we wouldn't join
the mass expulsion of Serbs, the UÇK decided to make us leave
Kosovo, or kill us.

Q: When did the threats start again? And how
exactly?

A: The threats started again in July, I think. First only by
telephone; later they began to come to our house, at night - four or
five people usually, sometimes
more, in UÇK uniforms. They had guns, knives. First they wanted
me to work for them; I am an engineer and they needed qualified people.
They wanted me to make diversions on power stations and phone lines. I
refused. Then they started to break in our house several times a week,
to beat us up: me, my
father. My mother and younger sisters
had to watch them do it, at gun point. We had no more sleep at
night. This was a thousand times worse than anything Serbs did, or
didn't do, or could have done: our own people were torturing us because
we wouldn't be cut-throats.

Q: Didn't you try to ask some protection of
KFOR?

A: Yes, we did. KFOR said that there's nothing
they could do unless we called them while the assault was
still going on. No, we couldn't hope for any protection
on their part. Then later, in August and September, the
situation became even worse. One night, I remember, three
men broke in. They didn't even bother to put on masks
- we could all see their faces. One of them put a knife
to my sister's throat. He said: "Next time I come,
if I find you all here, I'll rape her in front of you and
then cut her throat wide open!" And my sister is
just 13 years old. It was then that my father said,
for the first time out loud: "I think we'll have to
leave, sooner or later." Even I, who was up to
that point strongly against it, had to agree with him.
You see, all the time I kept thinking that the situation
would get better, kept hoping there would finally be some law and
order. But as time went by, I saw no improvement -
just more killings, more blood. I don't care so much
for myself, but my family, my sisters, that's something
else.

Q: So you finally decided to leave? But why
come to Belgrade, of all places?

A: Where else could we go? Besides, we have
old family friends here: I lived in their house for five
years while I was studying in Belgrade. We knew that we
could count on their support. So when we finally decided to
leave Pristina, Belgrade was the only logical choice. I
knew, of course, that some people here would look at us
with mistrust and disapproval, but that was to be
expected wherever we went. And anything was better than
Kosovo. There was no place there for us anymore. Still, I shall never
forget the day we left - it was the worst day of my life. It's hard, you
know, when you have to pack all your life in one car, leave behind all
you have ever known as your own, lock the house and throw away the key.

Q: Where do you live now?

A: We live in our friends' house - they are
wonderful people indeed, the best I have ever met. There
is simply no way for my family and me to show them how
much we appreciate all their help and their support.
We'll stay forever in their debt.

Q: Do you see, anywhere in future, the
possibility for you and your family to go back to Kosovo?

A: I am sorry I have to say it, but no, I see
no possibility for that, even in the distant future. The
situation in Kosovo will remain unstable and unsafe in
the years to come. There's no life there for us. Even
if things do get better someday, we'll always be traitors
for our compatriots. They want to live in some imaginary
state, some Greater Albania, and they don't even know this
state will never exist. Me, I want to live in Yugoslavia.

End

***

Emperor's Clothes comment: The Western media portrays
stick-figure
ethnic Albanians who freely support the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA) because of what the media has claimed are
atrocities committed by 'the Serbs.' But an
army of NATO-organized forensic experts have failed to
produce any evidence after scouring Kosovo for six months.
The Western-controlled War Crimes Tribunal has attempted to
talk its way around this failure. This is analyzed in "Spinning the Kill: Albright's
Tribunal Hastens to Save a Lie,"
at http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/spin.htm

So what is the basis of the
KLA's support? In "Why Albanians
Fled Kosovo During NATO Bombing,"
Cedomir Prlincevic, the Kosovo Jewish leader, essentially
argues that the KLA used a) terror and b) the obvious
fact of Western support to "persuade" powerful
Albanian clan leaders to command their rank and file to
'support' the KLA.

In "The
roots of Kosovo fascism," at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/thompson/rootsof.htm George Thompson documents the existence of a virulent
Nazi minority among Kosovo Albanians starting in the
Second World War. It is this continuously existing racist
movement, many argue, which provides the hard-core of KLA
activists, the types whom Agim K. talks about in his
interview. The tragedy of Kosovo is that the US and
Germany have brought these forces to full power for the
first time since World War II, banishing from Kosovo
the many Albanians who, like Agim K., stood for the
Yugoslav ideal of brotherhood.

***

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